Abstract

The SAGE Library of Political Science collects together the articles that have been most influential in shaping the discipline.

Each multi-volume set presents a collection of field-defining published works, both classical and contemporary, sourced from the foremost publications in the discipline by an internationally renowned editor or editorial team. They also include a full introduction, presenting a rationale for the selection and mapping out the past, present and likely future of each area.

The series covers both the key approaches to studying the discipline and the primary sub-fields that form the focus of political scientists' work.

The SAGE Library of Political Science will be an essential addition for university libraries throughout the world with an interest in Political Science.

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Comparative politics is the essence of political science. With Aristotle its most ancient intellectual forebear, the field is also a child of the scholarship of Alexis De Tocqueville, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Gaetano Mosca, Roberto Michels, and Vilfredo Pareto, and others who established modern social science more than a century ago. Today, comparative politics also draws nourishment from all the social sciences: economics, anthropology, and sociology, and, of course, political science; it also learns from recent work in cognitive science and decision theory. In comparative politics, the strands of social science come together, covering more than three centuries of knowledge about politics.

In this field, political science joins two fundamental tasks. Comparativists study the politics of particular places in order to address ...